By The Cholodny-Went Model is an theory in biology from the 1920s that describes how light energy on part of a plant will stimulate growth of the entire plant by producing and transporting a hormone (called auxin), to other parts of the plant that don’t get the benefit of direct light exposure. This is how root systems are grown, as well as leaves and branches on the lower areas of the plant.
The Cholodny-Went theory is valuable because it serves as a model for processes in any realm – human life, business, industry, education, etc. that result in indirect improvements in other areas.
The model is a good example of how positive stimulus in even a small area can have a large positive impact on something that might be seemingly unrelated.
How can this be applied to life and business?
Self improvement: Apply the Cholodny-Went model to improve your life by realizing that certain behaviors and actions can have an indirect positive (or negative) effect on other areas of your life.
Hiring: Good employees are hard to come by. But if you can get hiring done right, the rest of your business will excel in multiple areas as a result. A company is simply made up of the people multiplied by the systems in place that allow those people to be productive. It is a simple principle: having more intelligent and skilled employees means that your company will do better.
Steve Jobs has discussed how getting “A-players” together results in future hiring becoming a self-policing phenomena where they only want to hire other A-players to work with. By hiring a few A-players at a company and allowing them to work together, a company will likely not only have more productive employees, but also impact future hiring by enabling
Exercise: Doing squats might seem like solely a leg exercise, but the effect of doing this simple workout may indirectly help stimulate hypertrophy (muscle growth) throughout the human body. Squats are so intense and require so much physical exertion that they help increase testosterone throughout the body. Leg workouts are known to have this effect as well, but squats have the greatest effect [2]. This indirectly helps you build muscle and strength in your upper body, core, and other areas. The simple act of exercise does more than improve your life physically. The act of doing hard things and pushing yourself may improve your mental and stress levels in other areas of your life.
Product development: Elon Musk has a common business mantra that goes “focus on making the product great”. By applying the Cholodny-Went principle here, we can begin to understand why Elon believes so fervently in this statement. By improving the product, this has a down-stream positive impact on other areas of the company:
- Lower customer support cost: A better product means that the customer support team has an easier job, with fewer bugs and customer issues to solve.
- Lower marketing budget: A better product also means that news may spread by word of mouth, so the company needs to do less in the way of advertising.
- Better finances: a great product will be one that customers are excited to buy. If customers love the product, they will buy more of them, so the company will be more profitable.
Learning: The world of knowledge is seemingly infinite. One of my favorite instagram accounts shares a large amount of Charlie Munger Quotes.
Using the Cholodny-Went model in your own life
There are many ways the Cholodny-Went model may be applied to life and business.
As CMQ investing has discussed on his substack page, using various models when thinking about problems can help you make better decisions.
Leave a comment and share a few areas where you can apply the Cholodny-Went model to improve your own life!
Sources:
- https://www.cell.com/current-biology/pdf/S0960-9822(02)70780-X.pdf
- Hormonal Response to Leg Exercise: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24276305/
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